With Firefox 67 having released this week, Firefox 68 is in beta and its performance from our tests thus far on Ubuntu Linux are looking real good. In particular, if enabling the WebRender option that remains off by default on Linux, there are some nice performance gains especially.

Curious how the Firefox performance is looking following the optimization work in Firefox 67 and the maturing state of WebRender, I ran some benchmarks. On an AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX + AMD Radeon RX Vega 56 workstation running Ubuntu 19.04 with the Linux 5.1 kernel, I ran various benchmarks using the generic Firefox Linux x86_64 binaries. Tests were done on Firefox 66.0.5, Firefox 67.0, and Firefox 68.0b3. With both Firefox 67 and Firefox 68 Beta, secondary runs were also done when forcing WebRender usage.

Hi there! I first published this newsletter episode on May 21st and hitting the publish button at the same time as Jessie who wrote an excellent announcement post about WebRender on the stable channel. We decided to unpublish the newsletter for a couple of days to avoid shadowing the other post.

WebRender is a GPU based 2D rendering engine for web written in Rust, currently powering Mozilla’s research web browser servo and on its way to becoming Firefox‘s rendering engine.

Firefox 68 has officially entered Beta. The deadline to ship localization updates into this version is June 25. It’s important to remember that 68 is going to be an ESR version too: if your localization is incomplete on Jun 26, or contains errors, it won’t be possible to fix them later on for ESR.

A lot of content has landed in Firefox 68 towards the end of the cycle. In particular, make sure to test the new stub installer in the coming weeks, and the redesigned about:welcome experience. Detailed instructions are available in this thread on dev-l10n. You should also check out this post on how to localize the new “Join Firefox” message.

Everything you share on the internet is a story. You read blog posts and watch videos that make you feel connected to people across the world. Virtual Reality has made these experiences even stronger, but it wasn’t available to most people as a storytelling tool, until now.

This breakthrough in accessibility comes from VR pioneer and award winning journalist, Nonny de la Peña, who is founder & CEO of the immersive technology company Emblematic Group. Their newest initiative was to launch a browser based platform that allows anyone to tap into the immersive power of virtual reality, regardless of their technical background. That is exactly what they did with REACH. With support from like minded partners such as Mozilla and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, de la Peña launched the platform at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. REACH completely simplifies authorship and distribution of virtual reality experiences using a simple drag and drop interface which anyone can access from any device, including a laptop, tablet, or smartphone.

Tor Browser 8.5 is the first stable release for Android. Since we released the first alpha version in September, we've been hard at work making sure we can provide the protections users are already enjoying on desktop to the Android platform. Mobile browsing is increasing around the world, and in some parts, it is commonly the only way people access the internet. In these same areas, there is often heavy surveillance and censorship online, so we made it a priority to reach these users.

Private browsing was invented 14 years ago, making it possible for users to close a browser window and erase traces of their online activity from their computers. Since then, we’ve bundled in various levels of tracking protection and privacy control. While that’s great, some basic browser functionality pieces were missing from the Private Browsing Mode experience, namely giving you the option to save logins and passwords and giving you the power to choose which extensions you wanted enabled.

Cryptocurrency, cryptomining. We hear these terms thrown around a lot these days. It’s a new way to invest. It’s a new way to pay. It’s a new way to be deeply confused. To many of us, crypto-things sound like technobabble from sci fi movie. If you’re used to thinking about money as something that is issued by your government, kept in a bank and then traded for goods and services, then wrapping your head around cryptocurrency might be a bit of work, but we can do it!

Is your computer fan spinning up for no apparent reason? Your electricity bill inexplicably high? Your laptop battery draining much faster than usual? It may not be all the Netflix you’re binging or a computer virus. Cryptocurrency miners may be using your computer’s resources to generate cryptocurrency without your consent. We know it sounds like something out of a video game or one of those movies that barely gets technology right, but as much as cryptomining may sound like fiction, the impact on your life can be very real.

If you wonder why you keep seeing the same ad, over and over, the answer could be fingerprinting.

Fingerprinting is a type of online tracking that’s different from cookies or ordinary trackers. This digital fingerprint is created when a company makes a unique profile of your computer, software, add-ons, and even preferences. Your settings like the screen you use, the fonts installed on your computer, and even your choice of a web browser can all be used to create a fingerprint.

Mozilla recently announced that we are planning to de-commission irc.mozilla.org in favour of a yet to be determined solution. As a long time user and supporter of IRC, this decision causes me some melancholy, but I 100% believe that it is the right call. Moreover, having had an inside glimpse at the process to replace it, I’m supremely confident whatever is chosen will be the best option for Mozilla’s needs.

I’m not here to explain why deprecating IRC is a good idea. Other people have already done so much more eloquently than I ever could have. I’m also not here to push for a specific replacement. Arguing over chat applications is like arguing over editors or version control. Yes, there are real and important differences from one application to the next, but if there’s one thing we’re spoiled for in 2019 it’s chat applications. Besides, so much time has been spent thinking about the requirements, there’s little anyone could say on the matter that hasn’t already been considered for hours.

With the introduction of the new Firefox Quantum browser in 2017 we changed the look, feel, and performance of our core product. Since then we have launched new products to complement your experience when you’re using Firefox and serve you beyond the browser. This includes Facebook Container, Firefox Monitor and Firefox Send. Collectively, they work to protect your privacy and keep you safe so you can do the things you love online with ease and peace of mind. We’ve been delivering on that promise to you for more than twenty years by putting your security and privacy first in the building of products that are open and accessible to all.

Today’s new Firefox release continues to bring fast and private together right at the crossroads of performance and security. It includes improvements that continue to keep Firefox fast while giving you more control and assurance through new features that your personal information is safe while you’re online with us.

Firefox 67.0 was released today. From the Mozilla blog: "Today's new Firefox release continues to bring fast and private together right at the crossroads of performance and security. It includes improvements that continue to keep Firefox fast while giving you more control and assurance through new features that your personal information is safe while you're online with us." You can download it from here, and see the release notes for details.

The first version of the WebXR Device API is close to being finalized, and browsers will start implementing the standard soon (if they haven't already). Over the past few months we've been working on updating the WebXR Viewer (source on github, new version available now on the iOS App Store) to be ready when the specification is finalized, giving developers and users at least one WebXR solution on iOS. The current release is a step along this path.

Most of the work we've been doing is hidden from the user; we've re-written parts of the app to be more modern, more robust and efficient. And we've removed little-used parts of the app, like video and image capture, that have been made obsolete by recent iOS capabilities.

There are two major parts to the recent update of the Viewer that are visible to users and developers.

Script debugging is one of the most powerful and complex productivity features in the web developer toolbox. Done right, it empowers developers to fix bugs quickly and efficiently. So the question for us, the Firefox DevTools team, has been, are the Firefox DevTools doing it right?

We’ve been listening to feedback from our community. Above everything we heard the need for greater reliability and performance; especially with modern web apps. Moreover, script debugging is a hard-to-learn skill that should work in similar fashion across browsers, but isn’t consistent because of feature and UI gaps.

With these pain points in mind, the DevTools Debugger team – with help from our tireless developer community – landed countless updates to design a more productive debugging experience. The work is ongoing, but Firefox 67 marks an important milestone, and we wanted to highlight some of the fantastic improvements and features. We invite you to open up Firefox Quantum: Developer Edition, try out the debugger on the examples below and your projects and let us know if you notice the difference.

On Thursday April 18, my primary mechanism for talking to friends notified me that it was going away. I’d been using BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) since I started work at Research in Motion in 2008 and had found it to be tolerably built. It messaged people instantly over any data connection I had access to, what more could I ask for?

The most important BBM feature in my circle of contacts was its Groups feature. A bunch of people with BBM could form a Group and then messages, video, pictures, lists were all shared amongst the people in the group.

Essentially it acted as a virtual private social network. I could talk to a broad group of friends about the next time were getting together or about some cute thing my daughter did. I could talk to the subset who lived in Waterloo about Waterloo activities, and whose turn it was for Sunday Dinner. The Beers group kept track of whose turn it was to pay, and it combined nicely with the chat for random nerdy tidbits and coordinating when each of us arrived at the pub. Even my in-laws had a group to coordinate visits, brag about child developmental milestones, and manage Christmas.

Smart home devices can make busy lives a little easier, but they also require you to give up control of your usage data to companies for the devices to function. In a recent article from the New York Times’ Privacy Project about protecting privacy online, the author recommended people to not buy Internet of Things (IoT) devices unless they’re “willing to give up a little privacy for whatever convenience they provide.”

This is sound advice since smart home companies can not only know if you’re at home when you say you are, they’ll soon be able to listen for your sniffles through their always-listening microphones and recommend sponsored cold medicine from affiliated vendors. Moreover, by both requiring that users’ data go through their servers and by limiting interoperability between platforms, leading smart home companies are chipping away at people’s ability to make real, nuanced technology choices as consumers.

At Mozilla, we believe that you should have control over your devices and the data that smart home devices create about you. You should own your data, you should have control over how it’s shared with others, and you should be able to contest when a data profile about you is inaccurate.

One of the promises of immersive technologies is real time communication unrestrained by geography. This is as transformative as the internet, radio, television, and telephones—each represents a pivot in mass communications that provides new opportunities for information dissemination and creating connections between people. This raises the question, “what’s the immersive future we want?”

We want to be able to connect without traveling. Indulge our curiosity and creativity beyond our physical limitations. Revolutionize the way we visualize and share our ideas and dreams. Enrich everyday situations. Improve access to limited resources like healthcare and education.

This week's Google Marketing Live event produced several new options to make Android and iOS just that little bit more ad-heavy. For 'little', read 'understatement'.

They include 'gallery ads' which will allow you to swipe through images, which will become part of the search process on mobile. They'll also form part of the 'Discover' option in the Google Assistant screen and on Google's mobile home page.

Last year, in a React side-project, I had to replace some content in a string with HTML markup. That is not a trivial thing to do with React, as you can't just put HTML as string in your content, unless you want to use dangerouslySetInnerHtml — which I don't. So, I hacked a little code to smartly split my string into an array of sub-strings and DOM elements.

More recently, while working on Translate.Next — the rewrite of Pontoon's translate page to React — I stumbled upon the same problem. After looking around the Web for a tool that would solve it, and coming up short handed, I decided to write my own and make it a library.

Best Command-Line FTP Clients for Linux

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a network protocol used for transferring files between a client and a server on a computer network. The very first FTP applications were made for the command line before GUI Operating Systems even became a thing and while there are several GUI FTP clients, developers still make CLI-based FTP clients for users who prefer using the old method.
Here’s a list of the best command-line based FTP clients for Linux.

Why Windows Containers Are Less Attractive Than Linux Containers

The fact that you can run Docker containers on Windows as well as Linux is amazing. Yet, I sometimes struggle to see a clear use case for Windows containers. Compared to Linux containers, there are fewer obvious reasons to run containers on Windows.
I know that’s a somewhat controversial statement, so let me walk through the various reasons why Windows containers are much less attractive than Linux containers.
Also: Streamlining Software Development and Distribution with Containers [Ed: Paid-for SPAM from EMC. “Buying the news”… the new “biz model”? Companies literally buying not only the narratives but also the space and the staff?]

Android and GNU/Linux Software on Chrome OS

The new feature was first noticed by Keith I Myers. It is available in Chrome OS 76.0.3789.0, which is the first dev build of Chrome OS 76. It goes without saying that the feature is unstable right now. It is in the very early stages, so bugs and stability issues are to be expected. Also, keep in mind that GPU acceleration is only supported on a handful of Chromebooks...

For the past few years, it’s been possible on many Chromebooks to install the Play Store and run Android apps. This opened the door for Chromebooks to become more than just glorified web browsers. Now, Google is looking to make some major under-the-hood changes to Chrome OS’s Android apps support, which may allow for a long-requested feature.